is it smoky right now?

[jenrichmond]

Because my eyes are itchy and I'm interested in how the current bushfire event compares to other bushfire events historically, I wonder whether it would be interesting to pull together air quality data into a site like the "Is it hot right now?" on (https://isithotrightnow.com/) by Mat Lipson, Steefan Contractor and James Goldie.

This site has similar data https://aqicn.org/map/sydney/

Data also here https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/air/current-air-quality/air-quality-index-values

[JohnOrmerod]

I like. Sydney air is awful right now. Glad I am in Melbourne for a few more days.

[MitchStares]

As a fire ecologist, I am all for this and can provide alot of expertise and data. But I can tell you that alot of this has been done already. My lab in particular has air quality monitors all up the coast and inland. Us fire ecologists are horrendously busy right now :D And yeah the air quality is horrible. The smoke from the fires has been reducing air quality in parts of south America :(

[jenrichmond]

hi mitch, I'm so glad there are fire people like yourself monitoring this. I wonder whether pulling the data into a site like https://isithotrightnow.com/ might help some of the science that you and your colleagues are doing get to the public. I like how the site plots today relative to historical data (how far back to airquality measurements go?) and gives you an idea of how things are changing.

I really hope this level of air quality is not our new normal.

On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 9:42 PM Mitch Stares notifications@github.com wrote:

As a fire ecologist, I am all for this and can provide alot of expertise and data. But I can tell you that alot of this has been done already. My lab in particular has air quality monitors all up the coast and inland. Us fire ecologists are horrendously busy right now :D And yeah the air quality is horrible. The smoke from the fires has been reducing air quality in parts of south America :(

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[MitchStares]

The more I think about it, the more I realise that this could be a really good project. My initial response was quite reactionary just knowing how much is going on in our field at the moment. I dont think this in particular is being done. But I do agree that this would be a cool project to do and quite topical. I'm not particularly versed in air quality myself, but I can ask some colleagues that are and see how good the historical air quality data is. In saying that, large scale climate data synthesis and web scraping are my wheelhouses, so this idea appeals to me greatly :)

[jenrichmond]

awesome.... timely visualisations from NYTimes too

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/02/climate/air-pollution-compare-ar-ul.html

On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 10:08 PM Mitch Stares notifications@github.com wrote:

The more I think about it, the more I realise that this could be a really good project. My initial response was quite reactionary just knowing how much is going on in our field at the moment. I dont think this in particular is being done. But I do agree that this would be a cool project to do and quite relevant. I'm not particularly versed in air quality myself, but I can ask some colleagues that are and see how good the historical air quality data is. In saying that, large scale climate data synthesis and web scraping are my wheelhouses, so this idea appeals to me greatly :)

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[dvanic]

@jenrichmond I can't breathe at all anymore!!! And I'm super-sensitive to the pollution after the Moscow fires of 2010. So I've gone down the rabbit hole of masks, air purifiers and a home sensor :( Being able to breathe is not a costly privilege...

---

WRT project, I've seen the site you link to, which seems to list the data from the BOM sensors. I use this website/app when making decisions about my day https://www.airvisual.com/world-air-quality , and have found that it doesn't pull real-time data from the BOM sensors, so the data from the government has quite a bit of lag, whereas the modelling results tend to be consistent with what's going on outside.

With the visualisation, what additional features over the site you link do you think should be provided?

[jenrichmond]

:( I thought it was getting better this morning and now it is worse that ever!~! I've been looking at this site https://aqicn.org/map/sydney/ which seems to give real time day to day information. And this morning I managed to download all recorded data (reocrds go back to 1994) from this site. https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/air/search-and-download-data

I started plotting it but then got in a battle with lubridate

I think what is particularly nice about the isithotnow site is that is plots relative to historical percentiles. Given that this event is the longest lasting airquality that SYdney has ever experienced https://www.sbs.com.au/news/sydney-set-to-keep-wheezing-through-longest-period-of-bushfire-air-pollution-on-record, and that these events might become more common, it would be interesting to plot each day relative to that day in all the recorded years, and what %tile is is. Today would be smokier than 99% of all other recorded days I imagine.

On Thu, Dec 5, 2019 at 3:21 PM Darya Vanichkina notifications@github.com wrote:

@jenrichmond https://github.com/jenrichmond I can't breathe at all anymore!!! And I'm super-sensitive to the pollution after the Moscow fires of 2010. So I've gone down the rabbit hole of masks, air purifiers and a home sensor :( Being able to breathe is not a costly privilege...

WRT project, I've seen the site you link to, which seems to list the data from the BOM sensors. I use this website/app when making decisions about my day https://www.airvisual.com/world-air-quality , and have found that it doesn't pull real-time data from the BOM sensors, so the data from the government has quite a bit of lag, whereas the modelling results tend to be consistent with what's going on outside.

With the visualisation, what additional features over the site you link do you think should be provided?

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[dvanic]

@jennybc We just spent some time together as an office watching the large particles of ash falling down...

[dvanic]

I also just saw this really cool visualisation/data story

[maelle]

Maybe relevant https://docs.ropensci.org/ropenaq/ 🙂

[njtierney]

Just wanted to chime in to say that this sounds like such an awesome idea!

[jenrichmond]

James Goldie (one of the isithotrightnow peeps) was answering a question on twitter for me this morning, so I nabbed him and asked about the openness of the code for that site. Check it out....

https://github.com/isithot/isithotrightnow

[MitchStares]

The only response I have to this is... Dope I think that will provide a good base for us to work with. I am all for this project :)

[Sayani07]

calendar plots like this https://pkg.earo.me/sugrrants/index.html could be useful!